Cheryl Tunnell Springfield

All witnesses purchase of interest, and suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as talk of sexual assault. It may be sensitive for some listeners. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go Hey, guys, welcome back to Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and get into right now and true crime. I don't have a ton to talk about, but we're gonna touch on a few things. So let's get the sad and the bad out of the way first. So there has been a huge and I mean huge, like I don't think I went an hour without seeing a post about Marcellus Williams leading up to his scheduled execution on Tuesday. There was so many people that were up into arms and saying what they thought and posting how to call the Governor's office. His instagram, the Governor's Instagram was blowing up, and I was very impressed that this was such a big movement. And unfortunately, our cries and our pleas were not heard, and they did execute Marcellus on Tuesday, September twenty fourth, which is just so frustrating and I don't even have words for it. There are so many different people that could have stepped in to stop this execution, and not one of them decided to do that, and that is very, very frustrating, especially when you're looking at a case where you have actual DNA evidence that exonerates somebody and it's obvious that they're not guilty of this crime. The victim's family is even coming out and saying we don't want him executed. The former prosecutor that prosecuted the case against this man is saying he didn't get a fair trial. This isn't right, we can't execute this man. And it's still went ahead and happened. And I took a moment on Monday on my Instagram and Facebook stories to highlight some of the injustices in Missouri, because there is a lot of them, and those are just the ones that I am aware of that I shared and posted about. And you have to look at things, kind of look at the bigger picture. If there's that. Many wrongful convictions happening in one place, there's a problem with our justice system. These are all people who have been proven to be innocent, who have been released from prison. We're talking Ryan Ferguson, We're talking Rus Farea, We're talking Rodney Lincoln. There is a lot going on in the state of Missouri where they are convicting people just for the hell of it so they can close a case. And it is so frustrating. Russ Farriea's case is still in process. He is out of prison, of course, but the person that was arrested, Pam hop for the murder of Russ's wife, that Russ went to prison three and a half years for that case still hasn't gone to trial yet. Like we are literally still waiting for justice for Russ's wife, Betsy. It's insane and the amount of shady movements that the State of Missouri makes when it comes to these cases is astonishing. But that is all I want to say about that. I am really sad for Marcellus's family. I am sad for him, and I hope he gets the peace that he never got here on earth. All right, moving on, they officially have completely demolished the Chad day Bell property and I didn't realize it was happening so quickly, but I saw Nate Eaton was live and and they were in the process of demolishing it over the weekend, and I was just watching kind of like, holy moly, they're actually demolishing this home and the whole thing, like it's all completely gone. It is just land now. And honestly, I think that was the best thing they could have done, because that property and that house is just evil. There was evil there prior because Chad Dabell lived there, and it was just an evil place. I don't think that there would be any amount of stage and holy water that could cleanse that area. So tearing it down really was the best thing. And then they're going to, I guess, go on to proceed with the plans of making it some type of community area. I'm not really sure what the final plan is going to be, but I will be sure to keep you guys updated. But at least the house is gone and they tore down Also some of the the tree that JJ was found under, they tore that, took that down, so I'll be keeping. You guys updated on that. I also do want. To share there was a story that I did. It was two parts. It was about Joe Brian and the death of his wife, Mickey Brian. Joe was convicted and put in prison for a long long time for the murder of his wife, and he was innocent and was eventually released, but unfortunately he was still guilty in the. Eyes of the law, because we. Don't ever want to admit that we're wrong, and they didn't want to drop the charges against him, so even though he was out, he was still considered guilty in the eyes of the state of Texas. So there was a post on the. Facebook page that Joe's family ran in support of him, that he was put on hospice care, and unfortunately, Joe passed away over the weekend. And it's horrible because this man spent the majority of his life incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit, while he was trying to process that his wife had been brutally taken away from him, and that he was in the hot seat for so long. It was horrible that he. Had to go through what he had to go through and unfortunate that he spent so many years of his life in prison. But I do hope that at the end he realized and knew how many people supported him and knew that he was innocent. So that is a super sad update. But I wanted to be sure to let you guys know because I did cover his story and it's definitely a sad one. But I hope that he is at peace now. All right, We're going to end this right now in true crime with a happy story because I don't ever hardly get to share happy things. With you guys. So this is a case from nineteen fifty one. There was this little boy that went in saying from a California park in nineteen fifty one, and he has been found alive and well on the East Coast. And the reason that they found him is because of DNA testing, because he submitted his DNA to such and such website whatever, and his family never gave up hope trying to find him. So his name is Louis Albino. He was six years old when he was kidnapped from the Oakland Park when he was playing. There with his older brother. He was lured off by a woman who promised to buy him candy, and instead of giving him this candy, she transported him out of state and they eventually ended up on the East coast. There were some investigators that continued to search for him, but they were never able to find him or his remain But his mom never gave up hope that he was alive, and she was pretty much at the police department weekly visiting talking. To them about what they could do to help find her son. So earlier this year, his mother passed away and there was a niece in the family who finally took it upon herself to do some more research and try to track him down. Now, this niece is sixty three years old and she knew that her uncle was missing because they had talked about it in the family over the years. She decided to do one of the online DNA tests in twenty twenty and one of the mattress that came back was a twenty two percent match with a man that she had never met, and she ended up reaching out to him but didn't hear back, so she just kind of let let it go. She didn't really do anything about it. But then earlier this year, she watched a documentary I Guess about DNA and finding long lost family members, and she decided to look back into it. So they began searching this man's name and her family began to think that this was the man that they had been missing all of the time, this was her long lost uncle. So they contacted the missing Persons unit in March and said, hey, this might be him. So they ended up reopening the case, and they scoured through and collected a bunch of DNA samples from those family members that were still living, and they were able to eventually get in touch with this man. So, this man, it's been seventy three years, Like I have actual chills. So he is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran and he served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He thought that this couple who had him were his parents. He had no idea that those weren't his parents. So this man got to reunite with his family. He got to reunite with his brother who had been with him that day that he was taken. And that brother ended up dying two months after the fact. So that was a super important emotional reunion that. Those two had. The only thing that would have made it better is if his mother was still alive to know that her son all this time was still alive and had been living a. Very great and fulfilled life. They are still looking into what exactly happened, who these people were that kidnapped him. It does seem like he lived a very nice life. But it's really sad when you hear of these stories where someone is completely taken from the life that they know and brought into another life and all of their old memories kind of go away. They don't even really remember. What life was like before they were taken. So that is a good story. We'll celebrate the story. It is rare that we hear of a story like this, but it just goes to show you that it truly is never too late for some of these cases that I talk about, even though they're forty years old, it is never too late. And never give up hope, because this is a prime example of what happens when you don't give up hope. And DNA advancements in the DNA technology changing every single day, getting better every single day, and I think we're going to have a lot more of these happy ending stories in the coming years. So with all of that being said, we are going to go ahead and get into this week's episode. Okay, guys, today we are. Jumping in to a brand new unsolved homicide case. Today, we're going to be talking about the unsolved murder of a woman named Cheryl Lynn Springfield out of Fort Worth, Texas. Cheryl was only twenty one years old when her life was taken on Christmas Day of nineteen eighty. Cheryl was a new mother and had her whole life ahead of her. So we are going to first, as always, talk about Cheryl's background, what was going on in her life leading up to her unfortunate and untimely death. Cheryl was born Cheryl Lynne Tunnel on September ninth of nineteen fifty nine in Breckinridge, Texas, which was west of Fort Worth. She was born to parents, Kenneth Berkeley Tunnel and Patricia Ann Ellis. Cheryl and her older sister jan were primarily raised by their mother, pat who was a single mom to her two daughters. Cheryl often went by the nickname Sissy. Cheryl and her family would eventually move to the south side of Fort Worth, Texas, when Cheryl and her sister Jan were an elementary school. Once they made it to middle school, they moved again to a town called Crawley, Texas. Cheryl did very very well in this new small town, and by the time she was fourteen, she was making good grades and she had also made the school's drill team. It was at that point in time that she met a boy named Scott Springfield, and at this time, Scott was working at the quick Way convenience store in town. They ran into each other and kind. Of exchanged a little bit of conversation, but eventually they parted ways and would again reconnect when Cheryl was seventeen and they began to date. Soon, Cheryl found herself pregnant, and in nineteen seventy seven, Scott and Cheryl ended up getting married just one week before Cheryl was to turn eighteen. Scott and Cheryl very much did everything they could to provide for their growing family, but they super struggled. Scott worked at. A radio stack and Cheryl was pregnant and working as a manager of a burger restaurant. Despite very much struggling in the financial aspect of things, they were both looking forward to having a child and being a family. On February tewod of nineteen seventy eight, Cheryl and Scott welcomed their son, Scott Allan Springfield, to the world. Because Scott Allen and his father have the same. When I'm referring to Scott, that is adult Scott, and when I refer to Scott Allen, that is going to be baby Scott Allen, just to be clear. So from there, Scott and Cheryl very much tried to make their new little family unit work, but not even three years into the marriage, they realized that it wasn't going to work. Scott, although he was very much a stand up guy, felt like he had no freedom. He didn't want to be tied down to a wife at that point in his life, and honestly, I think he was just trying to be a good guy and do the right thing by marrying her since they were going to be having a child together. But inevitably it was not working. So although Cheryl didn't want the marriage to end, she didn't fight Scott on the divorce, and on August thirteenth of nineteen eighty their divorce was finalized. She had custody of their son, Scott Allen, but definitely wanted Scott to be able to see his son whenever he wants. She didn't want any stipulations put on anything. She wanted him to be able to freely come and see Scott Allen anytime he wanted. Because she didn't really grow up with a father, she didn't want their son to also not grow. Up with a father. Following Scott and Cheryl's divorce, Cheryl and her son, Scott Allen would move in with her mom in Crawley, Texas until she could get her life together and get back on her feet, and she would soon move again and she would move in with her ex sister in law, Cindy, who she was very close with. So Cindy is a really big important part of the story, and we'll get to that in a little bit. But Scott and Cindy were siblings, so Cindy was pretty much Cheryl's ex sister in law, but they were still very very close. So the house that Scott and Cindy grew up in that belonged to their parents was eventually given to to Cindy because Scott and Cindy's parents had divorced. This house was located at three three seven to zero Whittier Street in Fort Worth, Texas, so Cindy inherited this house. Cindy also had a brand new baby girl named Christy, and she thought that it was going to be the best idea to move into this home and have Cheryl and Scott Allen move in with her, so it would be the two girls and their babies essentially. Scott Allen was around two at this point in time, so the four of them decided to move in together, and eventually two more girls named Nancy and Donna, who were sixteen and seventeen, would also move in. Now, this home was big enough for. All of these people and they all. Would essentially have their own little space, but they would all hang out together at home, but they weren't all super close. They all had their own lives and they would do their own thing, but they would hang out together, they would party together. It was just that kind of environment. So at this point in time, Cheryl was twenty one and she was newly single because she had just gone through with her divorce. So she would. Occasionally go out from time to time, and Scott would often come over to spend some time with his son, Scott Allen, and he would also babysit Cindy's daughter as well. So, despite the divorce, Scott and Cheryl both were very cordial towards one another and they got along and co parented Scott Allen very well, and they had only been divorced for a short time when Cheryl was murdered. But for being such a young and newly divorced couple, it really seems that they handled this situation extremely well, and that is super unheard of in these situations. So I have to. Give props to them for being young, trying to figure it out, trying to raise their son, and coming. Together to do so. I think that is highly, highly commendable. So we are now on December twenty fourth of nineteen eighty Christmas Eve. Cheryl and her sister jan usually would travel to Crawley to visit with their mom, but Jane was out of town visiting some friends and wasn't going to be in town to attend their regular Christmas plans. So Cheryl decided that she was going to take baby Scott Allen to Crawley on Christmas Eve Day and visit with her mom Pat and then she would come home that evening and then Scott would come over the next morning so they could all spend Christmas together with their son. Cindy, Donna, and Nancy all had their own separate Christmas Day plans. Cheryl would go to her mom's house with baby Scott Allen, and then pat Cheryl's mom would drop her back at home that evening. Although she really wanted them to stay, Cheryl was insistent that she'd go home so that way she could have Scott come over in the morning and they could all spend Christmas together. So Scott confirmed with Cheryl that he would come over early that morning, and Scott had plans on Christmas Eve. He spent Christmas Eve with his mom and then he started having some car troubles. So when Christmas morning came and he. Was expected to be at Cheryl's house, he was having car issues. So he ended up walking about five blocks from where he was staying with the roommate, and the roommate is named. Mark, to Cheryl's home. So he gets there and he uses his key to unlock the door, and he said he walked in, everything was pretty much quiet. He didn't see or hear anyone initially, but then he walked into the living room and he saw someone lying under the Christmas tree and he just assumed that it was one of Cheryl's roommates, probably Donna or Nancy, because he didn't know then. He didn't know what they looked like. He just knew that there were two other young girls who were kind of party girls living at that house, and he also noticed that the person that was under the Christmas tree was naked. Again, he didn't think much of it. It was nineteen eighty things were a lot different. This was a house where four single women were living. He didn't really think much of it. Then he heard two year old Scott Allen crying from the other room, and of course went to check on him, but he couldn't find Cheryl. He then went back into the living room and discovered that it was in fact Cheryl under the Christmas tree and she was not breathing. She had a cord wrapped around her neck. At that point in time, he called the police and said that he needed medical help in hopes that hopefully Cheryl could be saved. He then called. His mom, He called Cheryl's mom. He called his roommate Mark and mark girlfriend, who were at their house that they share together, and Mark and his girlfriend arrived first because they lived the closest. They were only five blocks away, and when Mark got there, he took it upon himself to place a sheet over Cheryl because she was nude, and I think in his mind he was trying to be respectful and give her a little bit of dignity. And Scott very quickly realized that this was a crime scene and even said to himself and said out loud, I can't touch her. This is a crime scene. Although I'm sure all he wanted to do was try to touch her and help her and save her, but he knew that something horrible had happened to Cheryl in this house. I also do want to add that Cindy's baby, Christy, was also in the house and was unharmed, as was Scott Allen. So the cops arrive and they end up securing the scene. In the meantime, Cindy returns home from a night out of drinking and partying. She is greeted by cops who basically tell her that Cheryl has been murdered and she is just in shock. She wants to go inside of the house. She wants to know what's going on, but they end up taking Cindy and Scott to the police station, and the investigators end up getting in touch with Nancy and Donna as well to come in for questioning because somebody has to know something. They want to. See where everyone was, if anyone knows anything, if anyone knows anyone that would want to harm Cheryl, what would the motive be here? So that was kind of the first thing that they did. They got all three ladies that lived in the home, they got Scott, and they brought them all down to the police station. Cheryl had been strangled and she also had been sexually assaulted. She was strangled with a cut off iron cord. So whoever did this went in to Cheryl's home and cut the cord off of her iron that was in that home and used that to strangle her, which is horrible, and there had been an obvious struggle. Cheryl fought for her life. Cheryl had scratches and bruises all over her body and it was a horrific, horrific scene. Now Jan of course got the news that Cheryl had been murdered and she was just absolutely distraught, as was Pat Cheryl's mom. I cannot imagine the agony that they went through when they learned that not only had Cheryl been found dead, but that she had been brutally murdered in her own home at twenty one years old, with her baby in the next room, I cannot imagine. So Cheryl's family was in the process of planning her funeral and they did hold her funeral in Crawley, Texas, and Cheryl ended up being buried in her hometown of Breckinridge, Texas. Now, it wasn't until jan got to see her sister, Cheryl's body as they were preparing for the funeral and they had the viewing when she realized how bad and brutal this attack was. They had picked out a certain outfit for Cheryl to wear, and she was dressed in a turtle neck and this was essentially covering up all of the bruises that were all over her neck. Whoever did this to Cheryl, it felt super, super personal and it was a violent attack. And like I said, they did all of this while there were two babies in the other room, which is insane to me. So it was nineteen eighty DNA evidence and technology is not what it is today. It wasn't even in the beginning stages of what it is today. So a lot of what they collected from the home was really hard for them to kind of figure out what was what because there were a a lot of women living in this house. They had four ladies, two babies, and a bunch of different people in and out of that house. It was known to be kind of a party home, so you have a lot of different fingerprints, footprints, DNA hair, all the things. In and out of that house all day long. So none of the evidence that investigators collected turned up anything at all in regards to a possible suspect. There wasn't any sign of forced entry. However, there isn't really a way to know if the house was locked or unlocked, because if you recall, I talked about Scott going over to the home Christmas morning and using his. Key to open the door. But this was something Scott did all the time, and he doesn't remember if when he unlocked it, if the door was already unlocked, or if he physically unlocked it. He put his key in, he turned, and then he went in. He wasn't thinking about it, because that's not something you normally would think about. You would just put your key in and then you would go in either way. But of course Scott was the number one suspect because they had recently been divorced. It was two months post. Their divorce, and it's always like the disgruntled X that they are going to look at first. But Scott was more than cooperative with the investigation and ended up passing two polygraph tests that were given to him. And honestly, in. My research of this story, I have the biggest sympathy for Scott Springfield and Scott Allen, of course, but Scott Springfield definitely never struck me as the type that would do anything like this to Cheryl just reading about the relationship that they had, and even after they were separated, he really seemed to care for her, and of course they had a child together. He would never have gone into that home done something to Cheryl and then left two children unattended. With Cheryl, There's absolutely no way. Scott very much to me, seems like he was a stand up guy, and no matter how many times people questioned him, he never wavered. And even over all of the years, anytime a new cold case detective comes in, he is always number one at the top of the list, and every single time he tells the truth, he says what he knows, and he has never ever, ever, been ever named a suspect in this case. And I understand that they have to rego over evidence and relook at things with fresh eyes. I get that, but Scott. Springfield is one hundred and ten percent not involved in any of this, and I think him having to navigate everything that he had navigated back then, he really did the best job he could with what he had, and I. Think that is truly, truly commendable. Now, going back to Nancy and Donna, when they were questioned, of course they didn't have anything major to add because they were not there. But one thing that I think was interesting is that Nancy ended up having to completely leave town because she began getting threatening phone calls, basically saying you're next, you better watch out. Now. There wasn't any way for them to trace these phone calls, but eventually they did find one of the phone calls to be a kid in town that had sold Nancy someweed at one point in time, and he was basically just prank calling, and the other calls could have very much been that as well. Small town's talk, and I'm sure that's not a very nice thing to do, especially I can't imagine the t that a teenager was feeling after somebody was murdered in the home that they lived in, and then getting threatening calls. So this whole thing very much turned Nancy's life upside down. After that night, she never spent another night in the house, and she ended up moving away to San Antonio, far away from Dallas because her family very much feared for her safety, and understandably so I can't imagine that. So there were a couple of suspects here and there in the course of the investigation, but they didn't have a ton to go off of. They also had a crime scene that had un knowingly been tampered with when Mark decided to cover Cheryl with that cheat. So we're now going to talk about two suspects that were definitely looked at during the course of the investigation. Now, surprisingly both of these suspects have connections to Cindy. Now Cindy, like I said, it was Scott's sister and the one that Cheryl lived with. And I want to preface this with saying Cindy was young. Cindy was a new mom. Cindy had a lot going on in her life. Her parents were recently divorced. She just had this baby. She had also gone through a separation, and she was young. She wasn't making the best choices in her life. She would struggle with addiction issues and she would make some really bad choices. Not gonna lie about it, but Cindy loved Cheryl. They were very very close, and Cindy would never have knowingly done anything to bring harm to Cheryl or bring anyone into her life that would bring harm to Cheryl. So I do want to just put that out there, because the rest of this episode is going to be very, very focused on Cindy. I don't want anyone to get a twist did and think that I am saying that Cindy is a bad person because of any of this, because I do not think that. I think Cindy was young and unfortunately, sometimes people come into our lives and they manipulate us, and they make us think that they're the best thing on the earth, and before you know it, you're in way, way, way too deep. So the first man who was kind of a suspect was a man named Ricky Brothers. Now, this guy was Cindy's ex husband and the father of her daughter, Christy. He overall wasn't a great human. He had a bit of a temper, and I think that's kind of why they suspected him, and he eventually would go on to commit suicide, which is really sad and tragic. But there's really nothing that. Ties him to Cheryl's murder other than he was just a little off the wall and was just kind of not a good person and had a bad temper. Not really somebody that I would say is a prime suspect in Cheryl's murder, but they had to look into him, I'm sure for some reason or another. Now, the second. Guy that they thought was a suspect is a man named Barry Kelly. And Barry Kelly is not a good person. We're going to start that off right front and center. Not a good person. This story is going to be a wild freaking ride. Buckle up for the story of Barry Kelly. So, Barry had a connection to Cindy. They had some type of relationship at some point in time. I don't know exactly the circumstances of their relationship. I saw something about how they met over the phone. I don't know in what capacity that really means, but it sounds like it was a very codependent, possibly abusive relationship. Barry was twenty one at the time of Cheryl's murder, and he had gone to prison in nineteen seventy seven for some burglary and ended up being released in nineteen eighty. And he had been in contact with Cindy. Previous to this before he went to prison, and once he got out, he continued to persist and was trying to get in touch with Cindy. And Cheryl didn't really like him. I don't know if she ever officially met him, but she would answer phone calls when he would often call at the house for Cindy, and she basically told him, Cindy doesn't want to talk to you, she doesn't want anything to do with you. Stop calling here. But Cindy denied that Barry would ever hurt Cheryl and said that he wouldn't do that because he very much cared for her, meaning he cared for Cindy. But following Cheryl's murder, Barry goes on a wild crime spree in North Richland Hills. He ends up randomly kidnapping a girl at knife point from her house and takes her but essentially gets scared by a passer by and ends up letting the girl go and ditching everything. Which is crazy town. How do you go from being a burglary person to literally kidnapping a girl at knife point. What is wrong with you? So he goes on the run and he's eventually picked up two days later by cops, but then he ends up escaping running away after he assaulted a police officer with an ashtray, which again, what are you thinking? Why are you doing this? And he is just really making all of the wrong choices in life. So he ends up getting jail time, but he gets jail time for assaulting the police officer, not for the actual kidnapping of the girl. Which again is wild. So he gets out of prison in five years, and then he reconnects with Cindy. He just kind of randomly pops back into her life. And Cindy at this point is of course a little bit older, but she's been through a lot. Her good friend, her ex sister in law, has been murdered. She is a young mother to a baby girl, Christy, so she's been through a lot. So when Barry re enters her life, they began dating and by February of nineteen eighty seven they got married, but the marriage was very short lived. There was a lot going on. Barry continued to be a horrific, horrific human towards Cindy, and there was one point in time where he held her at gunpoint and used a homemade tattoo needle to tattoo his initials on her hand. So not only was he holding her a gunpoint, but he was holding her a gunpoint while giving her a makeshift prison tattoo. What are you doing? Barry? And Cindy will admit that she didn't want this tattoo. She didn't want his initials on her like that, But she did stay with him after that horrific experience. But she eventually would contract hepatitis from Barry, and that meant that she was officially done and she was going to leave him. But of course Barry is a crazy person, so he wasn't going to let her go that easily. On October ninth of nineteen eighty seven, Barry accosted Cindy outside of a store, basically kidnapped her at knife point, and forced her into his vehicle. He would then drive her to a wooded area and then he sexually assaulted her and terrorized her for several hours. This was the woman that he was married to, so imagine what this individual could do to somebody. That he didn't like. After that encounter, Cindy was able to get away from him, and he ended up being arrested and charged with aggravated kidnapping. And once he was in prison for this, it would come out that there had been another victim of Barry Kelly. And this is where he. Finally has to have some accountability for the actions that he has brought on himself. He has time and time again gotten away with horrific things, assaulting women, kidnapping women, assaulting police officers, the petty theft of robbery. But regardless, this man has gone on to do some horrendous things and he's been allowed to do it because he's been paroled, which does not make any sense. Whatsoever to me, but I get it. I understand that people are paroled all the time after they do horrendous things. So it turns out that he had started dating a woman who was named Mary Copeland in December of nineteen eighty six. This is one of the times that he was out on parole, and they later would separate when he and Cindy got married in nineteen eighty seven. However, once he and Cindy kind of broke things off and Cindy was trying to divorce him. He went running back to Mary. Mary's mom was always very kind to Barry, and Mary's mom was named Melva. She was sixty three years old and on October fifth of nineteen eighty seven, and this was just a few days before Barry kidnapped Cindy and terrorized her, Melva had disappeared from her home and there was obvious signs of foul play at the house. Her jeans were on. The floor, the bed was a little bit disheveled, and the mattress was kind of pushed a little off. One of Melva's. Bras was on the bed and the bra clasp was actually broken off of it, which those things are pretty powerful, so you would have to be pretty forceful to break one of those off. And then she also had a twenty two caliber pistol and that was gone. Her purse had also been stolen, which contained her and her deceased husband's wedding rings. Her turquoise and white Ford pickup truck was also missing, and that would be located the next day behind a wooded area. There were blood stains discovered inside of the vehicle, along with some rope and different cigarette butts. And plastic bags with cocaine inside. But it wasn't until Saturday, October seventeenth that Melva's body was found in a ravine just about ten miles from where the pickup truck had been abandoned, and they found a highly decomposed body which was identified as Melba, and what had been her cause of death was there was a long piece of material that was ripped from her shirt. It had been tightly wound around Melba's neck, so she had been strangled, very similar to Cheryl. Because she was so decomposed, they weren't able to tell if she had been sexually assaulted or not. But Mary, who is Melba's daughter, had noticed this yellow stain on her bedspread and they took that DNA for testing and they were able to connect it to none other then twenty eight year old. Barry Dean Kelly. He was officially charged with first degree murder on January twenty sixth of nineteen eighty eight, and during the trial, there was some women who came forward who were sex workers, and they came forward and said that Barry had given them a ride in Melba's two tone four truck hours within her disappearance. So they had again people that were there had been in the vehicle and could vouch for the fact that he was the one that was using that car at that time. And why would he be using that car because he killed Melba. Because he's a horrific human. So Barry was sentenced to life in prison. He was found guilty of the murder of Melva, and then he ended up pleading guilty to Cindy's kidnapping charges. He came up for parole in two thousand and three and he was denied as he should have been, and he is up for parole in April of twenty twenty four. So say your prayers that this man does not get out of prison because he is a horrific, horrific human. So why am I telling you all of this. The circumstances surrounding Melva's murder and Cheryl's murder are very similar, very very similar, except he took Melva and put her elsewhere, didn't leave her body at the house, but there was obvious sexual assault, and he strangled her in a very similar way to the way that Cheryl was strangled with items that were at the home. He didn't go there with a plan, necessarily to kill these people, but he found items in the home to follow through with that. And could he have been so mad at Cheryl because Cheryl was seemingly getting in his way of him being in a relationship with Cindy that he went over to her house that night was arguing with her, and then he seemingly snapped and decided to kill Cheryl and leave her there. It's a possibility. We have to talk about it. That's why we're talking about Barry Kelly in the first place. Unfortunately, there hasn't been enough physical evidence to connect Barry Kelly to the murder of Cheryl Springfield. But there have been points in time where Barry reached out to investigators and said that he had information regarding Cheryl's death, but he was just messing with investigators quote unquote, he was just being a jerk. And there's, like I said, no definitive evidence to connect him to Cheryl's murder, although investigators and Cheryl's family do believe that he is the one who was involved in her death, and it's not super resolution, but at the end of the day, at least this person is locked up and isn't allowed to hurt anybody else. If he is the one that killed Cheryl. At least he's not out on the streets to do it to someone else. So that is the story of Barry Kelly. I wanted to highlight him because I think he is a huge part of the story. But there was also another suspect, and this suspect is none other than serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, because he allegedly confessed to Cheryl's murder, but the description that he gave as to how she was left wasn't accurate. He said she was wearing this black nightgown thing and she was obviously found nude, so none of that was accurate. And I don't know the last time I checked, I don't put a lot of weight into what a her riff is. Horrible serial killer like Henry Lee Lucas says, I don't find him to be the most dependable person. So that was just something that was mentioned in. The research I did that he had falsely confessed, but there was nothing to ever tie him to Cheryl's murder. So again we come up empty handed. We don't have anything to go off of in this case. So now I want to talk a little bit about jan because Cheryl's sister, Jan is such a huge important part of the story and still to this day fights to get justice for her sister and keep her sister's story alive. So Jan was obviously super traumatized by Cheryl's death. She ended up taking matters into her own hands, and she became a paralegal. She very much wanted to help people and kind of be on the inside to try and eventually help solve her sister's case. So we are going to fast forward now from the eighties to twenty seventeen, thirty seven years later. And I know it's wild that thirty seven years has passed before we have really anything new in this story, but that's what happens when it's nineteen eighty and there's not a lot of DNA and there's just kind of roadblocks everywhere you turn, and everyone you look into seemingly there's no definitive connection to Cheryl's murder. So it's twenty seventeen and a cold case detective is given Cheryl's case and he is named Jeremy Roden, and he starts kind of looking into things. He realizes whoever did this. Went into Cheryl's home, they didn't have a weapon on them necessarily, they went in, they cut this cord off of the iron. And then they killed her with it. And then in the midst of this, Jan is, you know, recalling some things from back then. Now, Scott Allen was young, he was two at most. At this time, so investigators don't really or didn't really put a lot of weight into children witnesses at that time. But Jan recalls that Scott Allen had said that the bad man had hurt his mama, which just absolutely breaks my heart that this little boy had to witness such horrific things. Now, this was all known information, but having Jeremy rode in take a fresh look at it with twoenty seventeen eyes was just the thing that the case needed. So there wasn't a ton of documentation, major evidence in any of Cheryl's files, But Jeremy recalled that he had heard a story that a few of Cheryl's neighbors had seen her talking to a man around two am that night and they were out on the front porch and that there was yelling, they were arguing. But there aren't any actual statements that are actually written out in print that were taken down from law enforcement at that time. So Unfortunately, this is just rumors and hearsay, and he said, she said kind of stuff. But if that is true, which I kind of think it is, then that could be our killer, and that could also give us a timeline as to when Cheryl was killed. So who were these neighbors, what are their identities? Can we go back and talk to them? So Jeremy wanted to try to figure out who they were. So there was a lot of people that were in a seminary school that was nearby, and this community that Cheryl and Cindy Liveton housed a lot of those seminary students. So Jeremy was thinking, maybe one of these people is who we're looking for. So he went back to try to look at some of the housing records, but of course it was nineteen eighty and there was no records kept of anyone who was living there at that time, so it was another dead end. Jan would constantly try to investigate her sister's case. She would request open case files, she looked at the crime scene photos time and time again, and she would even talk to former detectives that were working on her sister's case. And she became the. Biggest and most fierce advocate for her sister's case and still to this day, like I said, remains the biggest advocate for solving her sister's case. There is a partial fingerprint as well as DNA that was taken from the scene, but all of these years later, there has been no match to anybody in the database. But Jan very much believes that it is only a matter of time. In an article an interview. That Jan did in twenty seventeen, she said, we may not be able to get it now, but technology will be catching up. And if you're eighty years old and I have to come jerk you out of the nursing home, I intend to do that. Jan says that she will never give up in trying to find her sister's killer. Cheryl's mom did end up passing away without ever knowing what happened to her daughter. However, Cheryl his mom very much didn't like talking about what happened to Cheryl. It I think was probably a defense mechanism. She knew that that had happened and she was accepting of it, but she didn't want to talk about it, so they didn't really talk about it. But she passed away without ever knowing who was responsible for taking her daughter's life. Jeremy Road in. The cold case detective, ended up passing away in August of twenty eighteen, And the saddest news that I found as I was researching was that Scott Allen passed away in twenty twenty three. He was in his mid forties. So I don't know the circumstances of his death, but I do know that this poor child experienced so much trauma at such a young age and then had to grow up kind of in the shadows of what happened to his mom and this horrific person that took his mother's life. I can't even imagine growing up in that type of environment. And again the not knowing, not having any idea. If this person is still out there and could inflict harm as the family tries to maneuver through grief and growing up and everything else. It's just horrific. So Cheryl's family. Has a Facebook page that is dedicated to her and trying to find the person that did this to her. I will link it in the show notes, but it is justice for Cheryl Lynn Tunnel Springfield. Jan still remains. At the forefront of her sister's case and is doing everything she can to help keep the story out there, which is exactly how I came across Cheryl's story because of social media. So that just shows you the power of what one person can do for a cold case like this. So, as always, please share this episode. We need one little missing puzzle piece to solve Cheryl's case, and who knows you could be that person. You never know. This case happened before I was born, and it is incredibly too. Long without justice for Cheryl Springfield. So I'm going to be posting some pictures on my Instagram. And Facebook pages with some photos of. Cheryl and her family, and pictures of Cheryl and Scott Allen, and pictures of Cheryl and Scott. And I do very much think that time is running out and eventually the person that did this is going to be found. There's going to be enough evidence to connect them, and hopefully I can bring you that news when it happens. I will also be sure to link the Facebook page that Cheryl's family has started for her in the show notes as well, so you guys can go and follow along there. And I appreciate you for listening, especially listening to Cheryl's story this one was a little bit longer, but there was a lot lot to it and I wanted to make sure I was thorough and covered all of my bases. So thank you guys for listening to. This week's episode, and I will see you next week for a brand new unsolved case. I hope you guys have a great weekend and I will see you then. Bye.